Attending: Robert Wolpert (chair), Mike Pickett (vice chair), Roger Loyd (scribe du jour), Ben Allen, Ed Anapol, Pakis Bessias, John Board, Al Crumbliss, Ken Hirsch for Dick Danner, Nevin Fouts, Ed Gomes, Pete Goswick, Alan Halachmi, Patrick Halpin, Donna Hewitt, Jamie Lee Klima, Melissa Mills, Kyle Johnson for Caroline Nisbet, George Oberlander, Rafael Rodriguez, Mike Russell, Edward Shanken, Jeffrey Taekman.
Ex officio members present: Billy Herndon, Dave Kirby.
Guests present: Bob Nau, Bob Currier, Pat Driver, Kevin Lee, Carl Russ, Rob Carter.
Review of Minutes and Announcements:
- The minutes of the previous meeting were discussed but not yet adopted, subject to another week of review.
- Wolpert welcomed new members. We all introduced ourselves.
- Rodriguez: A trial with Time Warner cable modem is underway; IP would come from Duke.
- Herndon & Pickett: An enterprise directory based on a product from IPlanet is underway, to create an LDAP directory with a web front end for all of Duke.
- Pickett: The IT security officer position has been internally posted; if internal candidates aren't selected, it will be posted externally.
- Pickett & Rodriguez: The ECI group is a joint effort of the Medical School, Health System, and University staffs to combine voice, data and video technical infrastructure. A search for a sr. director for the ECI group is underway.
OVERVIEW OF TIVOLI
Driver: Tivoli is a management system for OIT and MCIS servers and desktops. It is projected to save labor costs by permitting central administration and troubleshooting. Currently, Operations and Availability seem to be the most useful components.
Halachmi: said the student computer clusters would be an ideal use for the Availability component, once Tivoli's use is broadened beyond OIT itself.
Security and privacy will be ongoing issues in the deployment of Tivoli. A copy of the Tivoli handout will be sent to the ITAC list.
DUKE WEB PAGE
Carter: The discussion sought to initiate conversations on how to conceive and manage the Duke web pages. Currently, the Duke web is the responsibility of the Public Affairs Office. The goal is to forward a proposal to the senior officers concerning the Duke web pages, within a month or so.
Halpin: SOE formed an editorial board for style and content.
Others: Currently there is an editorial committee for the Duke web pages, but it never meets. The ideal would be to have more faculty and student involvement in decisions. We should aim for excellence.
Mills: Various webmasters around the university should be involved.
Gomes: What would the scope of this proposal be? How many layers into www.duke.edu?
Fouts: We should look at other institutions, how they handle content and architecture.
Johnson: Content and architecture should be separated, so that the look of the site is maintained. Content should be the responsibility of those closest to the information.
Pickett: Policy decisions need to be made re: advertisements, and how many levels are centrally managed.
Carter: The search engine on the website has been problematic. Today, a new Google engine has been put in place. A product by Inktomi called Ultraseek is being considered as an alternative to the current "comprehensive" search engine.
Others: We need to encourage good practices, such as the use of ample and accurate meta-tags, refreshing of pages routinely, etc.
Who should be represented on a university website policy group? Admissions, Student Affairs, MCIS, OIT, Fuqua, Schools, Provost. President Keohane has asked
Betty Leydon and John Burness to pull together a proposal, with a preliminary report due in about a month.
NOVELL IPX-->IP
Currier: OIT is gathering information about servers on the University side that are running Novell IPX. Duke network managers are promoting the move to only one protocol, Netware Version 5 or higher, running IP. However, both on the OIT and MCIS sides of the operation, a significant number of servers are running either Netware 3 or 4, and will require upgrades to meet this standard. The need is to upgrade servers while Netware 5.0 is still free. Both MCIS and OIT are identifying servers needing upgrades. Main reason to go to IP is to permit work remotely.
Kirby: By going to all-IP, we will be more vulnerable to attacks and therefore need to exercise greater security.
Gomes: Some applications run only on IPX, and there is no acceptable IP alternative. Also, site license committee is trying to be sure that the Novell license doesn't run out before we are ready to migrate fully to IP.
MCIS reports routing 50% IP, 30% IPX, 20% other packets. OIT estimates 60% IP, 30% IPX, 10% other.
WIRELESS
Currier: Currently, an 802.11b installation is active in the Bryan Center with 4 access points, 2 more planned. Also LSRC cafeteria has been equipped; the Perk is next. Users have to reboot as they move into a different vendor's zone. The system operates at 11 Mbps currently, soon to be 22 Mbps. Issues of scaling up for authentication and security have kept OIT from promoting the wireless capability more widely, but persons wanting to register a wireless card only need to email wireless_reg@duke.edu, with name, phone number, and MAC address of the machine.
Issue: When do we move to 802.11a wireless?
If costs fall as projected, we might move in summer or fall 2001, giving us 55 Mbps connectivity.
Many other universities are working on wireless areas or campuses. We will learn from their experience as well as our own.
Suggestion was made to consider a location on East Campus, perhaps East Union?